Angela Cannings, who has continued to protest her innocence since being jailed for life for murdering her two infant sons, was launching a Court of Appeal bid today to clear her name.

Cannings, 40, from Salisbury, Wiltshire, was asking three judges in London to rule her conviction "unsafe".

She has always claimed her children died of cot death.

The shop assistant was found guilty by a jury at Winchester Crown Court in April last year of the murders of seven-week old Jason in 1991 and 18-week old Matthew in 1999.

Her appeal follows a decision earlier this year to overturn solicitor Sally Clarke's conviction for murdering her two young sons, and the acquittal of pharmacist Trupti Patel on charges of murdering her three babies.

One of the witnesses who gave evidence against Cannings was Professor Sir Roy Meadow, whose research was also a key factor in the Clarke and Patel cases.

His claim in the case against Mrs Clarke, that the chance of two children of the same family dying of cot death was "73 million to one", has been challenged by recent research suggesting that, because of genetic links to cot death, the odds could be as short as 64 to one.

Cannings, serving her sentence in Bulwood Prison in Essex, was expected to be brought to the Court of Appeal in London so that she could listen from the dock to the arguments in her appeal.

During her trial, the court heard she had been alone with both boys, who were asleep in their cots, when they died. They had appeared well in the hours before their deaths.

On each occasion she had found them gasping for breath, floppy and blue. She was arrested for murder after the death of Matthew in 1999 and charged in March 2000.